July 17, 2007: Massive concrete pour

DucksNuts finds this interesting one at Life Without Buildings, an architectural blog. The post there notes that there were 258 concrete trucks, each pouring approximately four loads, laying 11,500 yards of the stuff in one day. Look at all the trucks on the road, waiting for their turn.

What'll it be when it's all grown up? Condos. Apparently this size of slab is needed to keep the building solid once it's up.

See! I told them they needed more than a couple of guys with wheelbarrows and shovels! :D

Uisge Beatha;364971 wrote:

See! I told them they needed more than a couple of guys with wheelbarrows and shovels! :D

I guess you're right, but we had the low bid.

Oh, it's ssssssooooo biiiIIIiiiig!

i hope there aren't any pictures of me throwing those bodies in there

artemis05;365025 wrote:

i hope there aren't any pictures of me throwing those bodies in there

Find Jimmy Hoffa:

Is that square yards or cubic yards or what.

Concrete is delivered and billed as cubic. Square is meaningless.
San Diego in the summer, keeping it wet is a problem.
Great find, DuckNuts.

xoxoxoBruce;365070 wrote:

San Diego in the summer, keeping it wet is a problem.
Great find, DuckNuts.

Try K-Y

K-Y is water based, in San Diego summers you need petroleum based Vaseline.
Of course you can't use Vaseline with rubbers... but who needs rubbers, it never rains in the San Diego summer.

They look like toy construction vehicles.

How thick is the concrete? How long will it take all that concrete to set?

They look like bees coming back to the nest to deposit their nectar.

Kingswood;365161 wrote:

How thick is the concrete? How long will it take all that concrete to set?

As thick as they pour it (which means I don't know) and 31 days to max strength. Being a waterfront, quake prone, location, they probably were pouring the slab and the columns down to bed rock, all in one piece (monolith) for strength.

edit
Looking at the closed streets, empty parking lots and support trucks. I'd guess it was a very expensive Sunday operation. Overtime for everyone, even the cops blocking traffic.

From a couple of regs at Life Without Buildings....

Ingeniero said...

I don't get the numbers quoted above though. The current slab being poured looks to be about 150'x150'which is 2500SY. Assuming that it is a mat footing, it would have to be 4.5 yards thick to be a monolithic pour. Even if the whole building had a mat footing with an assumed area of 5000SY then the thickness would be 2.3 yards or almost 7 FT? Does that sound right for that type of footing?

Jimmy said...

The photo shows the southern half (half!) of the ten-foot-thick RAFT slab, which will support the 35 story tower.

Look at that crane!
Looks like they're concreting it in too! Maybe they'll use it as the elevator..

:blush: :bolt:

As I understand it, concrete generates heat as it sets up. That's A LOT of concrete, so, I am assuming a lot of heat. So, here's my question: If you throw a twelve pound turkey in there, how long til it's done?:sweat:

Do you really think a 12 pound turkey is going to feed 258 truck drivers plus a cast of hundreds?

xoxoxoBruce;365296 wrote:

Do you really think a 12 pound turkey is going to feed 258 truck drivers plus a cast of hundreds?

Guess I better keep that six-pack hid, huh?